ICE says it never acted on plan to mine driver records

Feb. 15, 2013
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Police officers check drivers at a sobriety checkpoint in Escondido, Calif., in December 2011. Officials in Washington had approved several tactics designed to catch illegal immigrants, including participating in local police checkpoints, / Lenny Ignelzi, AP

by Brad Heath, USA TODAY

by Brad Heath, USA TODAY

Federal agents never carried out some of the controversial tactics approved as part of a push to boost criminal deportations last year, including a plan to troll state driver's license records for lists of foreign-born applicants, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency official said Friday.

USA TODAY reported Friday that senior immigration officials in Washington had approved several tactics to make sure the government would not fall short of its target of deporting 210,000 convicted criminals in the fiscal year that ended in September. Among the steps agents proposed were mining state driver's license databases, participating in local police checkpoints, and dispatching more agents to county jails.

Records suggest the tactics would have ratcheted up deportations of people who had been convicted only of minor offenses.

Those disclosures alarmed some Latino groups, which said Friday they were disturbed that President Obama's administration would have put such an emphasis on hitting numeric targets for deportations.

"Setting immigration policy by a deportation quota runs counter to every talking point the Obama administration has used in the past five years," Chris Newman, Legal Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said in a statement Friday. He said USA TODAY's report shows that ICE "pushed agents to widen their dragnets to catch anyone who could help meet quota."

Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente.org, a Latino organization, said "the revelations about the Obama administration's deportation quotas are shocking, but not a surprise."

ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said Friday that "few of the contemplated steps were ever pursued," including proposals to mine driver's license records. ICE ultimately deported 225,390 people with criminal records last year - well above its target - and Christensen said many had been convicted either of felonies or multiple misdemeanors.

"Over the last four years, this administration has fundamentally changed immigration-enforcement policy. ICE is focused on smart, effective enforcement that prioritizes the removal of criminal aliens, recent border crossers and egregious immigration law violators," she said.